Chapter #10An Intertwine of Interviews by: Seuzz   "Chernov is dead," Paige Knotts says, and she hunches at the conference table, her hands clasped together.
It feels like your eyeballs have been flash-frozen, and the room lists a little to the side. No one says anything, no one even murmurs, but you can sense their sense of shock as an electrical buzz that crackles about the room.
"We don't have the full story," Knotts continues. "And we won't until the police finish investigating. Right now, though, it sounds like it was an accident."
"What kind of accident," someone asks in a husky voice, and it takes you a moment to realize it was you.
"All the police have said is that he hit his head."
"Faugh!" another says, and others also gasp out barks of incredulity.
"That's why we need to look into it deeper," Knotts says, raising her voice over a sudden hubbub. "People! Quiet down!"
"What do we know?" you ask loudly, trying to help her out. "Who found him?"
"The flat's landlady," says Knotts. "Apparently the door was open and she took a look inside. She found him in his birthday skin."
"Apparently?" Muniz asks in a skeptical tone.
"Whose flat was it," Cox asks.
"We don't know whose flat, but it wasn't one of ours," she tells Cox. To Muniz: "I'm only telling you what the police told me. I was pretending to be his sister, so maybe they were softening it for me."
You frown to yourself. Did Chernov pick up a date last night after Davenport's farewell?
"Anyway," Knotts is saying, "it took CID awhile to trace his kin, and I wasn't paying attention to my messages when they started calling me, so I only found out an hour ago. I'm supposed to meet them in an hour, over at the Barracks, so that's where we'll adjourn to." Her mouth settles grimly in a line. "Obviously, we'll be taking over the investigation from them."
* * * * *
It's only a fifteen minute drive to the Barracks, which is Diana's name for the council houses it maintains for the secondary ranks. Its seven surviving residents shift into the faces they use there—a mix of immigrant, student, and welfare cases of both sexes—and slowly filter back. You and Knotts and Muniz and Cox shift into temporary faces and take separate cabs and buses over.
Knotts beats you there, and when you catch up to her she's huffing an onion in the kitchen of a one-bedroom flat she's borrowed from Carrero. She's shifted into the form of a kewpie-cute Slav with saucer-like eyes and a weak chin under flat blonde hair. "You need me in here," you ask.
"This was your old flat, right?" she asks, and she's got a faintly Russian thrum running inside the words. "Carrero should have your old things still, so sure. You can be my best friend, come over to comfort me."
"Great. Who are you playing?"
"His sister, Katarina Chernov. Billy here is my boyfriend." She nods at the bodybuilder you ate lunch with, who has just come around the corner.
"You like 'em big and dumb, huh? Be back in five minutes."
In the chest of drawers you find the things you wore as Angela, your skin when you lived here: gym shorts and gym shoes and a football jersey that belonged to an American college football player. That's where you found "Angela"—a college cheerleader—and you stretch back into the form after warming the tat. Thick, luscious brunette hair, with wide hips and an hourglass torso set on taut, bronzed thighs. "Billy" ogles you more closely than he does Katarina when you return.
An hour later, you're perched on the back of the sofa, stroking your best friend's shoulders as she sniffs and weeps, when there's a knock on the door. Billy opens it, and ushers in a small thin man with large eyes under curly but closely cropped dark hair. His demeanor is grave as he introduces himself as Detective Constable David Hill. A police woman in uniform is with him, and takes up station by the door. Whereas Hill looks intense, she looks bored.
The detective asks a lot of questions, of course, about Konstantin Chernov, but Katarina affects not to know much. She and he came to England at the same time, from Moscow, two years ago but quickly parted ways, since he was a drunk and a scoundrel, and she hadn't talked to him in months. Where did he live? She doesn't know, for she has the impression he flops with friends or girls he picks up. And his work? He got a job with Admiralty Motorcycles when he came to England, but she doesn't know if he still has it. Have any of his friends talked to her recently? She always avoided his friends as much as possible, and none of her friends would have anything to do with him either. (You and Billy nod grimly at that.)
From his questions and what he says in answer to hers, you glean that Chernov was found dead in a bathroom whose tile floor was slick with soapy water. The preliminary evidence is that he slipped and bashed his head on the corner of a sink. Hill is tight-lipped, though, about the person whose apartment Chernov was found in.
The detective takes down what notes he can, then with soft regret asks if Katarina would come down to identify the body. She excuses herself to get some shoes, and when she returns she and the two officers turn toward the door.
As soon as they do, you take the palm-sized injection gun from under a cushion and leap behind Hill, catching him about the chest and stinging him on the back of the neck. In three strides, Billy is onto the woman and does the same to her.
"Accident, bullshit!" Katarina explodes as you and Muniz lower your burdens to the floor. She stomps out the door, and Muniz fetches the portable Mavis unit from the bedroom. "Evens and odds," you say as you start pulling the clothes off Hill. Muniz chooses odds, and when he wins he picks the woman for himself.
But Knotts has other ideas.
* * * * *
"They're gonna fuck up!" you yell at her after she's pulled you into another flat. "What are you thinking?"
"Shh, sweetheart," Knotts says, and puts her fingers over your lips. "Yeah," she says into the phone. "Cindy Sonya Cooper is the name." She reads off the address and other info she copied out of Hill's notes. "Priority code is Juliette Delta One Four Seven. Anything you can get on her. Call me tonight at seven with what you've got, but keep looking. Thanks luv, call you this weekend." She brushes the phone off and turns a brittle smile on you. "I'm sorry, Kips, you were offering a prognostication?"
You glower at her. "These are face cards you're throwing at Lamb and Stanfill, and with zero prep! Hell, I'd be flailing!"
"Look at the bright side," she dimples back. "I'm not throwing a couple of face cards at you with zero prep. Besides, Lamb and Stanfill are hungry for it—"
"Fucking cugines," you snort.
"And if they pull this off, I'll promote 'em to Double Knaves."
"Bump 'em up to fucking Dukes if they pull it off! But when they go tits up, you'll have Chernov and them to replace!"
"Honey, please. In the first place, I've hung out with CID before. They're thick as mud. And Hill is green, completely green. I bet he's been on the job six weeks, if that. And no one cares about this case but us. Chernov was barely documented, and I'm telling them he was a goon and a thug, probably mixed up with the Russian mafia. None of Hill's superiors will be paying any attention. Lamb can fake his way through as the DC."
"And Stanfill?" you grumble.
"It's only a cop in a skirt, basic technique can carry him. Besides—" She looks over your shoulder at the sound of the door opening, and her expression changes. "There you are, you fucks! You cunts! Get in here!" Gallion and Carrero shuffle meekly in. Knotts stabs a finger at the sofa, and as they lower themselves onto it she kicks their feet out from under them. "Convince me I shouldn't bust you down to deuces and sevens!"
"What do you want, Knotts?" Gallion bleats. He's six-foot-three, blonde and lithe, but he shrivels under her glare.
"You left the party with him last night. Where'd you go?"
"We came back here and drank some more."
"And left again. Where'd you go?"
"We didn't leave!"
"Chernov wound up in a girl's apartment! How did that happen?"
"I don't know!" Gallion says, and Carrero fervently nods. "We went to bed a little after twelve—"
"Pah! What, you needed to be up early for Sunday school?"
"The party was a buzz kill," Carrero grumbles, and looks darkly at you. "So we crashed early."
"Chernov went to bed at the same time?"
Carrero nods, but Gallion shakes his head: "No, I got up about twenty minutes later. To, uh, get some water. Chernov was texting in the living room."
"So you were all in the same flat?"
Gallion and Carrero both redden.
"Oh, you were entertaining each other," Knotts says. "Why didn't you say so? And Chernov didn't join you, and he wasn't here when you got up this morning?" They shake their heads.
She pushes them around some more, then dismisses them. "I gotta go ID Chernov," she tells you. "You and the others get the biffs to the elves."
"You mean to the freezer."
"No. The Moustache has a prototype that's ready for testing." She smiles. "It's called a shadow mind, and our detective constable can be the first test subject." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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